Facebook may serve ads on third-party sites

Facebook may soon be serving you targeted ads on third-party websites. Erin Egan, Facebook's privacy head, recently announced some proposed changes to the social networks privacy policy and followed up with a question-and-answer web chat earlier today. During the session, Egan emphasized that the company's policy always allowed for serving of ads off Facebook.

"We've always said in the data use policy that we may serve ads off Facebook and we may use that same information to serve you an ad off Facebook," said Egan. So for instance, if your friend "likes" a product, such as Coca Cola, Facebook may serve you an ad for that product that would say something like "Andrew likes Coke."

Egan explains that in the future, Facebook may take that same approach outside of the Facebook ecosystem to display that same ad on a third party website. That ad on the third-party site could be with or without the social context ("Andrew likes Coke") that explains why you're seeing the ad.

[via ComputerWorld]